Free Republic

Our entire system of government is designed to foster ineptitude. The top dogs in the agency are political hacks enjoying three or four years of the best-paid jobs they will ever have. Next down from them are the career senior executives who are selected based on being "generalist managers." See, instead of hiring competent specialists the public administration lobby decided it would be better for themselves if the top career dogs were not expected to be competent in the programs which they administer. The mid-level managers are selected based upon their willingness to hire and tolerate the appropriate racial quotas. The peons are selected based solely on demographics. The longer the fires burn the more time-and-a-half everybody (yep, from top to bottom, chair warming executives all the way down) gets. Fire season is the big pay-off and god only knows what the forest service will find to burn down once they finish off the rest of the national forests.

When Smoky Bear said "Only YOU can prevent forest fires", I guess he must have been addressing God. All of them seemed to have been started by lightning.

Or maybe the federal gubbermint on whose land the vast majority of these fires are burning. The feds are wholly incompetent stewards of the land. Its time to transfer title of all federal lands to the states.

Do you really think that somehow the accounting fraud started at 12:00pm. EST on January 20, 2001? If anything these accounting scandals are the Clinton chickens coming home to roost.

Well little Tommy Dasshole is certainly not reluctant to suggest Klintoon led the American Economy through 8/10ths of a decade of unparalleled virtuous corporate governance that has only now been disrupted by the vile Harry Pitt and the corrupt GWB. This is politics pure and simple. The lib media is going to be all over this from now till election day. GWB's best defense is a good offense. He needs to get somebody on board with impeccable white-collar crime credentials (hint: Rudy Guliani) to start controlling the news cycle with some busts and indictments for the reporters to slaver over.

You are right of course, but, shrill leftist cant is what passes for "moderate, dispassionate analysis" in the newspapers these days. And the news decides elections. Politically Bush has got to pull the rug out from under the national socialists and control the game. He needs to get Rudy Guliani on board pronto in some sort of special prosecutor role to Save Our Nation's Markets Now! A few indictments, arrests, trials, convictions every day is the perfect antidote to what will no doubt be a full court press on the innuendo front by the major dailies. And who better than the man Rudy, fresh from the NYC ramparts to lead the war against white collar crime - he's done it in the past and he can do it again. GWB needs Rudy working for him ASAP.

IMHO you are right, there will be many more cooked book (non)surprises coming out every day between now and the election. GWB needs to go nuclear and drop a few of his own...RUDY, RUDY, RUDY!.. GWB needs to get Rudy Guiliani on board pronto as some sort of chief prosecutor/committe chair/tiger team honcho whatever so that next to every new scandal article in the papers is an article with a list of indictees, arrests, convictions, whatever. Rudy cut his teeth on white collar crime prosecutions, now is the time for him to step forward to save Our Nation's Markets!

Speaking of fingers, W's plan can't be all bad if he's taking immigration away from Ashcroft. All Ashcroft wanted to do was fingerprint Arabs....now we can get someone in there who willing to chop off Arab fingers.

Economic growth may mask the zero-sum reality of racialism, maybe even long enough for the favored minority groups to embrace the benefits of color-blind governance. If we are not lucky, though, one bad bout of unemployment will likely ratchet up the ugly-meter.

After the Michigan decision, its official, we are now a "neo-apartheid" nation. Non-members of the favored minority groups are fungible and can and will be denied opportunities in education, employment, federal contracting, and in political districting on the basis of the color of their skin in favor of the favored minority groups under the guise of "diversity."

What do we have to show for it? How about the MRI

As far as I know the MRI was not a gubmint invention. Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating single payer. With what I pay in health insurance premiums (plus deductibles and co-pays) on top of what I pay in county, state, Federal, and sales, and the companies I hold stock in pay in taxes, I get half-way decent health care and an underfunded (well not as bad as in Canada)military and a bunch of worthless bureaucracy. I think the Aussies pay less than we do in taxes and they at least get some kind of national health care and their military is fairly decent. My comment was only attempting to compare value for the tax dollar paid - something that'll never be able to be done scientifically but something worth thinking about IMHO.

If there is anything in this world one can trust to be uniformly meaningless and inaccurate, it is health statistics. Even if anybody bothered to define their terms with a modicum of precision there is no possible way to meaningfully gather and report health data and there never will be. Why any nation bothers to flush money down that rat hole is beyond me. That being said, all these nations with single-payer health care systems are taxing their citizens at rates not all that much higher than what we are paying. What I want to know is what in God's Holy Name do we have to show for it?

My property valuation has risen 50 percent over the last two years - and I have to live with an impassable route 1 running through the neighborhood and all the disruption associated with multiple simultaneous large scale commericial developments due to the board rezoning areas. When did the board rezone anything commercial in north arlington? The last i heard you all were rioting because marymount university cut down a few bushes to put in a parking lot.

The 'rats running Arlington only care about all white North Arlington. In a lotta ways they are straight-line descendants of the old klan 'rats of days of yore. When they approved the Arna Valley project, they agreed to allow the developer to cram in a lot more units if the developer agreed to reserve a certain number as "low-income" housing. Then they bought another apartment building and set it aside as low income housing. Never mind that the local schools are horrendously overcrowded with students packed into trailers on the playgrounds and traffic is already so congested it barely crawls along. Two of the board members got a letter published in the WP arguing it was absolutely necessary or "where would our servants and the restaurant help be able to live." The board has a cute answer to South Arlington's traffic congestion, too: light rail. Yep, just run a light rail line down along Route 1 between it and the existing metrorail line. That will take care of all the problems they created by rezoning pentagon city and potomac yards. Just remember, racially mixed south arlington only exists as a real estate tax cow to keep real estate tax rates low for the 'rat klan dems in north arlington.

Government interference has made both medicine and individual insurance expensive. When employer-sponsored group plans got tax favored status the individual market began its descent into irrelevance. The government put the self-employed into the worst possible position risk-pool wise and didn't even bother offering any tax relief. Then the government turned every emergency room into a free clinic for those who couldn't pay, with their costs getting passed along to others, especially those who pay out of pocket and can't negotiate prices up front. Then the government unilaterally sets its rates for that part of the of the population covered by Medicare and Medicaid further forcing providers to raise rates where they can. Between the VA, HHS, DOD, the Indian Health Service, and the plan for federal employees, the government already controls the better part of the market. Instead of continuing to screw those in the individual market, we would be better off if we consolidated all of the redundant government plans and had the government negotiate contracts with insurance companies for a single national risk pool with an annual open season during which time individuals could choose to enroll themselves or their families at the same premium rates as the government negotiates for its beneficiaries and with the same tax treatment.

SEIZE THE DAMN OIL FIELDS

A little prep work first: Expel their "diplomats" and every filthy dog of a citizen they have in this country, close their embassies, freeze their accounts, ban the importation of their oil, ban all exports to them, sink every vessel that comes within 200 miles of their shores, and extend an open invitation to sodomite hussein to conquer them. Let the filthy dogs roll in their own blood.

And Beautiful Mind puts whoopie to bed at last....

I'm especially glad OP has broken down the balding child actor barrier that has kept so many greats from being acknowledged...

I'll help to tie her down.

Be careful, Julia Roberts might miss Halle and plant her lips on you...I hope Sidney and Denzel get compensated for her assaults...

Is she aware of what year this is?

Absolutely. Just shameless. Whoopie, Denzel, Will, Halle, Sidney all singing the same tune cause thats all they know...

No, Halle, Thank you for swordfish...now take some valium and calm down

overlooked

I agree with you. On the other hand, though, its hard to know what kind of competition TTT and ROTK will face. Hell, TTT might have a hard time up against something like We Were Soldiers...have to wait and see. Jeeze...I don't know what they have to say over at the Guild, but I for one am disappointed in J-Lo's garment...too much of it there...